"And is it not the over-plenty of labourers, that makes labour cheap? I remember this village when there were not more than fifty labourers' families, each with a cottage to itself; now there are upwards of eighty families, and sometimes two crammed together in one house. I have read in the newspapers, that the people throughout England have increased in the last twenty years thirty-two in every hundred--that is, where there were but ten, there are now more than thirteen." "But what has that to do with the poor rates?" "Why do not you think that the poor rates are an encouragement to early marriages?" "And what then," said Hannah; "did not the Almighty say, _Increase and multiply_?" "The command to _increase and multiply and replenish the earth_, was given--_first_, when there were upon the face of the whole earth no men and women at all, excepting the first pair: and _again_, when all mankind had been destroyed, with the exception of the family of Noah. The world was pretty well empty of inhabitants then, and wanted _replenishing_. But the case is different in an old inhabited country, which is already so _replenished_--so full and over-full--that the people stand in each other's way." "But surely, John, you are not for preventing marriages?" "Heaven forbid!" said the old man, wiping a tear of thankfulness from his eye; "Heaven forbid! It is to marriage that I owe the greater part of the happiness that I have enjoyed in this life; and marriage, I trust, has assisted in preparing me, through divine grace and the merits of my Redeemer, for happiness in the life to come. I know too who it is that has said, _Marriage is honourable in all_.--No, no, I am no enemy to marriage, I am its warmest friend. But then, as the Prayer-Book tells us, there are _two_ ways of engaging in marriage. Men may either enter upon it _reverently_, _discreetly_, _advisedly_, and _in the fear of God_; or else they may engage in it _inadvisedly_, _lightly_, and _wantonly_, '_like brute beasts that have no understanding_.' I am afraid that now-a-days young people are more apt to engage in marriage after the latter manner, than after the former. When I was young, men generally did not like to marry--I'm sure I did not--till they had secured a bit of a cottage to put a wife in, and a few articles of furniture, and perhaps a few pounds to begin the world with. Now boys and girls marry without thought and reflection, without sixpence beforehand, and trust to the parish for every thing--house, goods, clothes, and the maintenance of their children. As for the parish finding houses for all that wish to marry, it's what can't be done.--No, no, I don't want to prevent their marrying, I only want them to wait a very few years, that they may have a better chance of happiness when they marry. We all know, that _when want comes in at the door, love is very apt to fly out at the window_; and parish pay is but a poor dependence after all.